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March 1991 _EJournal_ Volume 1 Issue 1 ISSN # 1054-1055
An Electronic Journal concerned with the implications
of electronic networks and texts.
University at Albany, State University of New York
ejournal@albnyvms.bitnet
There are 421 lines in this issue.
CONTENTS:
Electronic Journals of Proposed Research 226 lines.
by Robert K. Lindsay
Mental Health Research Institute
University of Michigan
DEPARTMENTS:
Letters 11 lines.
Reviews 10 lines.
Supplements to previous texts 12 lines.
Pointers to texts appearing elsewhere 21 lines.
Information about _EJournal_ 92 lines.
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This electronic publication and its contents are (c) copyright 1991 by
_EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give away the journal and its
contents, but no one may "own" it. Any and all financial interest is hereby
assigned to the acknowledged authors of individual texts. This notification
must accompany all distribution of _EJournal_.
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Electronic Journals of Proposed Research
by Robert K. Lindsay
Mental Health Research Institute
University of Michigan
Asking the right question and asking the question right, it is often said, are
the most important steps in science. After that, some say (exaggerating for
emphasis), answering the question is just a mopping up operation. Nonetheless,
the bulk of scientific publications are devoted to reports of the "mopping-up."
The question-posing steps are most commonly relegated to grant proposals, where
they are examined by a small number of reviewers, at times ill-matched to the
task. Thus, proposals do not benefit from the open peer commentary that
scientific publications receive, nor do they elicit recognition and reward,
except, at times, in the form of money. It is safe to assume that some good
ideas, especially if they are truly novel, never see the light of public
scrutiny nor receive the resources necessary to carry them to fruition. The
other side of the coin is that some effort, at least, is devoted to executing
flawed designs or answering unimportant questions, as reflected in the
remarkably low citation rates of research papers (Hamilton, 1990, 1991). In
emerging fields, especially, the result is often that published research is
followed by retractions, qualifications, and belated criticisms. Further, it
is likely that some of the best suggestions are delayed or withheld altogether
>from the proposal process because their originators lack the time or resources
to carry them to the point where the rewards of recognition will accrue, and do
not wish others to reap the benefits of developing them.
Why do we not concentrate our most intense scrutiny on the most important
steps? The current system of limited, anonymous, and selective peer review
without opportunity for rebuttal or clarification is insufficient. Far more
productive would be journals of open peer commentary (following the format of
the very successful Behavioral and Brain Sciences) that publish research
questions and experimental designs, followed by a dialogue of counterproposals
and modifications before the expensive and time intensive steps of
experimentation, field work, model construction, and data analysis are
performed. The result would be detailed and carefully designed studies of
acknowledged importance. These proposals would then be in the public domain:
they could be carried out by anyone with the means and skill, or they could be
referred to in applications to funding agencies.
The emerging electronic global communications network will soon make possible
the implementation of such publication channels in a manner far more useful
than print. The fruits of efforts now underway to exploit the potential for
electronic collaboration has opened the door to electronic publication. This
technology could do more than simply improve the efficiency of document
dissemination and speed the processing of proposals in the old mode. The
opportunity to publish more than research "results" will be at hand.
Electronic dissemination, combined with the publication of proposals,
hypotheses, experimental designs, and criticism, could reward those who excel
at idea generation but eschew the later stages, speed the progress of science,
save resources now devoted to projects destined to be inconclusive, widen,
rationalize, and make more fair the grant review process, while easing the
(also unrewarded) burdens of grant review. Further, it could decrease the
frequency with which good ideas lie fallow because of the vagaries of referee
selection and the current review process.
Mention of electronic networks conjures visions of bulletin boards, with scraps
of paper tacked up, electronically, into a hodge-podge of junk mail that has so
little of merit that most of us soon stop searching for the good stuff. The
present suggestion is not intended to be a bulletin board, but rather a
refereed journal. The most common contribution for the journal would not be a
one paragraph "idea," but a detailed proposal of several pages that includes
hypotheses, experimental designs, and the logic of the argument. In other
words, the typical proposal would be similar to the scientific portion of an
NSF or NIH proposal, without the investigator and institutional information and
all of the other administrative paperwork. Editors and referees would select
proposals that were serious and had prima facie merit, and request some
referees to write reviews. Referees would evaluate and critique only the
ideas, not the qualifications of the proposer or institution. The proposal
would be "published" immediately, and the reviews would be distributed as they
came in. Short, unsolicited reviews would also be distributed as they were
received and edited (not refereed). The result could be the source of
information for a revised and presumably much better proposal which could serve
as the basis of a conventional proposal to a funding agency, either from the
originator of the contribution or from someone else. The funding agency would
be immensely helped by the extensive, documented review, and awards decisions
could be made much more rapidly, with less money wasted pursuing ill-conceived
ideas.
The central idea of this proposal is to extend critical peer review to the
earliest and presumably most critical steps of science, the problem and/or
experiment definition. This would be of some value even if carried out in
traditional ways. Such review is in fact now done for the very largest
projects, where the costs of mistakes are most obvious. The human genome
project, for example, is going through an extensive planning and review stage.
Most large engineering and business projects are extensively reviewed before
investing in them. It is my contention that smaller scientific projects should
also receive broader review than they now get. This is not primarily to give
overlooked ideas a better chance at funding, but rather to improve the
proposals that do get funded before serious design flaws cost time and money.
Savings are increasingly important, since the federal science budget has not
kept up with the supply of researchers and the cost of equipment (Lederman,
1991). I do not think that the present system of peer review is always
appropriate, because it is too narrowly specialized, anonymous, overly
selective, unrewarding to the referees, and slow. In electronic networks I see
the possibility of correcting these problems. An electronic journal of
proposed research is based on the assumption that refereed and edited material
could benefit from the speed of distribution, wide accessibility, machine
searching and editing, and low user marginal cost that are the most important
merits of electronic distribution.
Such journals would not be substitutes for current funding procedures. In fact,
the journals would not be involved in making monetary awards, so the
conventional route would still be needed to obtain funding. The open peer
review process is rather an alternative for those who, for whatever reason,
choose to use it. Any investigator unwilling to submit a proposal for open
inspection and perhaps implementation by another person would simply not do so.
Currently there are, of course, many grant awards made primarily on the basis
of the institution/investigator qualifications and abilities, with scientific
specifics being secondary. That is entirely appropriate and should continue; my
proposed journals do not address the issue of reviewing investigator
qualifications, but would confine themselves to scientific questions. I
believe there are many occasions where the new avenue would be attractive to
serious workers.
What would induce a person with a good research idea to use this avenue rather
than the customary method of seeking funding and the opportunity to carry the
idea to fruition, thus obtaining the intellectual credit that goes with this?
There are several possible motivations.
Science has long been compartmentalized as different disciplines, and the
specializations get narrower and narrower. Some sciences also specialize along
methodological lines: experimental versus theoretical, apparatus A versus
apparatus B. Yet it is still not institutionally acknowledged that some people
are better at generating ideas, some are better at criticism, some are better
at seeing the implications of hypotheses, and some are better in the laboratory
or at the computer. It is time to exploit these differences and reward them
equally with recognition and citation, while bringing our best weapon of
reason-- open peer commentary--to bear on all aspects of scientific work.
Second, some research requires expensive or one-of-a-kind equipment and the
appropriate infrastructure of human and other resources. Not everyone with
appropriate knowledge and creativity has access to the necessary facilities,
which cannot be duplicated for a single project.
Third, many of our most highly creative scientists already have a full plate of
research, and would be eager to see some of their good "excess" ideas explored.
Then, too, there may be cases in which a proposer fully intends to do the
research but wishes to have the benefit of constructive advice from a
scientific community that extends beyond a limited network of colleagues and
advisors. In still other cases, the "mopping up" operation may indeed be
straightforward and could be done by support staff elsewhere at low cost.
Finally, and more speculatively, there may in the future emerge another source
of research ideas born of computer technology and artificial intelligence. The
scientific literature is a vast warehouse of information which certainly must
contain the seeds of many important discoveries. Yet these seeds are dispersed
among different, often disconnected literatures that are not commanded by any
specialist. Human efforts augmented by electronic analysis of available
literature databases such as MEDLINE have in a few cases already revealed
previously unappreciated connections that suggest new experiments (see Swanson,
1987, 1989, 1990). Such discoveries have been and will continue to be made by
information specialists rather than those who are qualified to pursue the
necessary research. An Electronic Journal of Proposed Research (EJPR) would
provide an avenue to make such ideas public.
For an EJPR to succeed, it is important that it be edited and that it be
indexed into appropriately sized subdisciplines to permit automated, selective
browsing and dissemination, so that readers would not have to sift through
large files of material on subjects foreign to them. It must provide rapid
turnaround; and most important, there must be recognition of the contributors.
Validating priority of ideas is also important, although this is not a new
problem. If anything, electronic distribution reduces this problem in
comparison to print distribution which is slower, less accessible, and more
coarsely time stamped.
As I noted above, this proposal is not primarily motivated by the fact that
good ideas go unfunded, although pointing out that good ideas are not always
recognized is not a sour grapes argument, any more than pointing out that
awardees are generally worthy is an elitist argument. The beliefs that no good
ideas are overlooked by current procedures and that all funded research is the
best it can be are too preposterous to bother to counter with specific
examples. Problems with current procedures have been noted with concern (for
example, Marshall, 1987; Muller, 1980) and even with alarm (Snyder, 1985), and
various suggestions have been offered for reform (Koshland, 1985). I have
suggested an improvement that addresses these concerns in a new way: wider,
open peer review of scientific content, followed by revision and competition
for funding, expedited by the wide accessibility and manipulation of documents
through currently available technology. Although there would be many such
journals in the sense that there would be many specialized editorial boards,
they would be one journal in the sense that access over the electronic network
is uniform. I have not seen this proposed previously, and I think that it has
sufficient potential to merit serious consideration.
References
Hamilton, D. P. (1990) Publishing by - and for? - the numbers. Science
250(4986): 1331-1332.
Hamilton, D. P. (1991) Research papers: Who's uncited now? Science
251(4989): 25.
Koshland, D. E. (1985) Modest proposals for the granting system.
Science 229(4710): 231
Lederman, L. M. (1991) Science: The end of the frontier? Science.
Supplement to Volume 251, Number 4990, January 11, 1991.
Marshall, E. (1987) Gossip and peer review at NSF. Science 238(4833):
1502.
Muller, R. A. (1980) Innovation and scientific funding. Science
209(4459): 880-883.
Snyder, L. There are problems with the review process. Communications
of the ACM. 28(4): 349-350.
Swanson, D. R. (1987) Two medical literatures that are logically but not
bibliographically connected. J. American Society for Information
Science, 38(4): 228-233.
Swanson, D. R. (1989) A second example of mutually isolated medical
literatures related by implicit, unnoticed connections. J. American
Society for Information Science, 40(6): 432-435.
Swanson, D. R. (1990) Somatomedin C and arginine: Implicit
connections between mutually isolated literatures. Perspectives in
Biology and Medicine. 33(2): 157-186.
[ This article in Volume 1 Issue 1 of _EJournal_ (March, 1991) is (c) copyright
_EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give it away. _EJournal_ hereby
assigns any and all financial interest to Robert K. Lindsay. This note must
accompany all copies of this text. ]
Robert K. Lindsay robert_lindsay@ub.cc.umich.edu
205 Washtenaw Place
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
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Letters:
_EJournal_ is willing publish letters to the editor. But at this point we make
no promises about how many, which ones, or what format. Because the "Letters"
column of a periodical is a habit of the paper environment, we can't predict
exactly what will happen in pixel space. For instance, _EJournal_ readers can
send outraged objections to our essays directly to the authors. Also, we can
publish substantial counterstatements as articles in their own right, or as
"Supplements." Even so, there will probably be some brief, thoughtful
statements that appear to be of interest to many subscribers. When there are,
they will appear as "Letters."
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Reviews:
_EJournal_ is willing to publish reviews of almost anything that seems to fit
under our broad umbrella: the implications of electronic networks and texts.
Right now we are hoping to review one hypertext novel, and have no other
works-- electronic or printed --under consideration. We do not solicit and
cannot provide review copies of fiction, prophecy, critiques, other texts,
programs, hardware, lists or bulletin boards. But if you would like to bring
any publicly available information to our readers' attention, send your review
(any length) to us, or ask if writing one sounds to us like a good idea.
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Supplements:
_EJournal_ plans to experiment with ways of revising, responding to, re-
working, or even retracting the texts we publish. Authors who want to address
a subject already broached --by others or by themselves-- may send texts,
preferably brief, that we will consider publishing under the "Supplements"
heading. Proposed "supplements" will not go through full, formal editorial
review. Whether this "Department" will operate like a delayed-reaction
bulletin board or like an expanded letters-to-the-editor space, or whether it
will be withdrawn in favor of a system of appending supplemental material to
archived texts, or will take on an electronic identity with no direct print-
oriented analogue, will depend on what readers/writers make of the opportunity.
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Pointers to text appearing elsewhere:
This "Department" is Joe Raben's idea. It will appear whenever readers send
similar citations. Here is Joe's initial list, now several months older than
when he sent it, along with his suggestion:
Joe Raben: "One service you might add is a list of relevant articles in
places most of your readers would not be likely to look for them. For example,
the following just appeared in _Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society_
16:1 (Fall 1990):
Ruth Perry and Lisa Gruber, "Women and Computers: An Introduction"
Paul N. Edwards, "The Army and the Microworld: Computers and the Politics of
Gender Identity"
Sherry Turkle and Seymour Papert, "Epistemological Pluralism: Styles and
Voices within the Computer Culture"
Pamela E. Kramer and Sheila Lehrman, "Mismeasuring Women: A Critique of
Research on Computer Ability and Avoidance"
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Information about _EJournal_:
Users on both Bitnet and the Internet may subscribe to _EJournal_ by
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_EJournal_ is an all-electronic, Bitnet/Internet distributed, peer-reviewed,
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The journal's essays will be available free to Bitnet/Internet addresses.
Recipients may make paper copies; _EJournal_ will provide authenticated paper
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Individual essays, reviews, stories-- texts --sent to us will be disseminated
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Board of Advisors: Dick Lanham, University of California at Los Angeles
Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries
Joe Raben, City University of New York
Bob Scholes, Brown University
Harry Whitaker, University of Quebec at Montreal
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Consulting Editors - March 1991 - Inaugural Issue
ahrens@hartford John Ahrens Hartford
ap01@liverpool Stephen Clark Liverpool
crone@cua Tom Crone Catholic University
dabrent@uncamult Doug Brent Calgary
djb85@albnyvms Don Byrd Albany
donaldson@loyvax Randall Donaldson Loyola College
ds001451@ndsuvm1 Ray Wheeler North Dakota
eng006@unomal Marvin Peterson Nebraska - Omaha
erdt@vuvaxcom Terry Erdt Villanova
fac_aska@jmuvax1 Arnie Kahn James Madison
folger@yktvmv Davis Foulger IBM - Watson Center
george@gacvax1 G. N. Georgacarakos Gustavus Adolphus
gms@psuvm Gerry Santoro Pennsylvania State University
geurdes@hlerul55 Han Geurdes Leiden
jtsgsh@ritvax John Sanders Rochester Institute of Technology
nrcgsh@ritvax Norm Coombs Rochester Institute of Technology
pmsgsl@ritvax Patrick M. Scanlon Rochester Institute of Technology
r0731@csuohio Nelson Pole Cleveland State
ryle@urvax Martin Ryle Richmond
twbatson@gallua Trent Batson Gallaudet
usercoop@ualtamts Wes Cooper Alberta
University at Albany Computing Services Center:
Isabel Nirenberg, Bob Pfeiffer, Kathy Turek; Ben Chi, Director
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Editor: Ted Jennings, English, University at Albany
Managing Editor: Ron Bangel, University at Albany
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State University of New York University Center at Albany Albany, NY 12222 USA